From the NetworkConfigurator documentation: "(...) it defines an edge configuration with TCP in auto mode w/port range 9701-9799, multicast enabled on group "224.0.1.85", and port 1234, HTTP transport with only outgoing enabled."

Yet, some of the 9701-9799 ports are already registered for specific application at the IANA (http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers). Port 1234 is reserved for Infoseek Search Agent (which does not exists anymore but...).

Shouldn't JXTA register its own ports to create an official context facilitating their opening on NAT/Firewalls rather than sneaking unofficial ones? The procedure is described in section 19.9 of the following document: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4340.txt.

Much like HTTP JXTA has preferred ports but no fixed port. I can't honestly recall how the 9700-9799 port range was chosen (and I suspect there's nobody else who does either) but it remains my understanding that since these are only preferred ports that there's no particular problem. Since there's never been a preferred port for JXTA traffic we've never made any effort to register one. Even if we chose a specific port for JXTA there's no requirement that anyone deploying JXTA use that port # (nor particular benefit to doing so). Deployers are likely to chose the ports used by their JXTA deployments for their own reasons and that could include using ports they chose to register with IANA.

The 1234 port is used only for multicast on an assigned multicast id address. The port number assigments only apply to TCP sockets, not to other uses. For traffic which uses the JXTA multicast IP address we may use the ports any way we choose.